Ancient Rome: An Introductory History (21 page)

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two heads in the place of the one just cut off. When a friend congratulated Pyrrhus on his victory at Ausculum, Pyrrhus exclaimed, "If we beat the Romans in still another battle, we'll be completely destroyed."

Pyrrhus, disappointed in the progress of the war with Rome, and finding that the Italians subject to the Romans were not deserting them as he had thought they would, left for Sicily, where the Greek cities sought his help against Carthage. Pyrrhus won some battles in Sicily, but angered many with his despotic behavior, and returned to Tarentum in 276.

He faced the Roman armies again at the Battle of Beneventum, in 275. This time his elephants hurt him, by stampeding his own army. The Romans won the battle, and Pyrrhus speedily left Italy for Epirus, even leaving part of his army and one of his generals in Tarentum. That general and the Romans soon reached an understanding: He and his soldiers could leave unharmed if they gave Rome power over Tarentum. The general left, and the Romans made treaties with Tarentum and the other cities that had allied themselves with Pyrrhus.

Rome continued its battles against the other Italians who resisted Roman power. Within a few years, by 264
B.C.
, Rome was ruler of peninsular Italy.

How Rome Managed Italy

Italy was by no means a unified country; the modem idea of a nation does not describe Italy in the third century
B.C.
In northern Italy were the Celtic-speaking tribes of Gauls, whose social organization (the only Gauls with political power were the priests and the knights) made them even more warlike than the Romans; their unsettled way of life was changing as they came increasingly under Roman domination. South of them, but north of Rome, were the Etruscans, a civilization that had long before declined; they spoke a non-Indo-European language and were completely alien to the Romans, although the Romans had learned a great deal from them. East of Rome, in the Apennine Mountains, were the Sabines and Aequi; to the southeast were the Samnites; close to Latium were the Volsci; and farther south were the Campanians. With the

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Roman Italy. (Drawn by John Cotter)

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exception of the Latins, Rome's non-Etruscan neighbors spoke Oscan and other languages distantly related to Latin. In southern Italy were the Greeks. The only people the Romans had much in common with were the Latins.

How did Rome manage to rule these diverse peoples? The situation was complicated, since various groups had different legal status with regard to the Roman government.

Civitas Romana
(Roman citizenship). Roman citizens could vote, were expected to serve in the military, could marry other Roman citizens, had the right of engaging in commerce, and, after 167
B.C.
, did not have to pay direct taxes. Among the cherished rights enjoyed by Roman citizens was the
ius provocationis
, the right to appeal a capital sentence to the Comitia Centuriata.
Civitas Romana
extended to those Romans who were living in Roman colonies. After the Great Latin War, the Romans granted full Roman citizenship to some Latin towns, to bind them more closely to Rome.

Latinum nomen
("Latin rights," defined as
civitas sine suffragio
, "citizenship without the vote"). Holders of
Latinun nomen
enjoyed all the rights of Roman citizens except for the right to vote. Until 187
B.C.
holders of Latin rights could obtain full Roman citizenship by moving to Rome; then the Latin towns asked the Romans to abolish that policy, as too many Latins were deserting their towns for that purpose. Citizenship without the vote was granted to many Latin towns after the Great Latin War, and also to the inhabitants of Latin colonies. Those holding
Latinun nomen
in a way enjoyed dual citizenship, for they had civil rights in Rome and in their home cities, which were largely autonomous; one important restriction on their city's government was foreign policy.

Civitas sine suffragio
. To bind the special non-Latin Italian towns and cities closer to Rome, and to reward them for good and faithful service, the Romans started granting the inhabitants
civitas sine suffragio
. Towns and cities that received that grant were called
municipia
. To further ensure that the
municipia
, which were largely autonomous, would pursue policies advantageous to Rome, the Romans granted full Roman citizenship to the elected officials of the
municipia
.

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Socii italici
(Italian allies). The treatment of other cities, towns, and villages depended upon the provisions of the treaty that Rome made with them. The people inhabiting these places were called
socii italici
and included many peoples who either were persistently hostile to Rome, like the Gauls, Samnites, and Etruscans, or showed little inclination to adopt Roman ways, such as the Greeks. Being free noncitizens, they had no civil rights in Rome, such as the
ius provocationis
, although they enjoyed some basic rights through
ius gentium
(the law of nations), a type of international law. They could not marry Romans or Latins, or conduct business with Romans or Latins. They were liable to provide military service when the Romans called upon them for assistance, but they could not vote for or against their leader in war, or whether or not to go to war. Their towns were largely self-governing, with the important exception of foreign policy. They paid taxes to Rome.

Slaves and freedmen
. Slaves were
res mancipi
, the property of their owner, and had no civil rights at all. They did enjoy a temporary respite from their servitude on the Saturnalia (a festival of Saturn, held on December 17), when they were allowed to speak their minds with impunity and to do as they liked. Inhabitants of Rome who were noncitizens, and who had never been slaves, were simply
liberi
, "free men." Ex-slaves were called
liberti
, "freedmen." Like slaves, they enjoyed no civil rights.

The Colonies

To keep subject peoples loyal, Rome and Latium established colonies throughout Italy. There were two types of colonies, Roman and Latin. The Roman colonies started out with two or three hundred families of Roman citizens; the Roman government sent out a dozen such groups to locations in Italy. Far more important are the Latin colonies. The Romans and Latins together sent out thirty of these, and they were much larger, containing eight to twenty thousand colonists. The colonies were established in areas that were hostile to Rome or slow to adopt Roman and Latin ways, such as Etruria, Gaul, and Samnium. The purpose was both to spread Latin and Roman civilization and, by a constant military presence, to keep the hostile peoples under control.

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Roman citizens joining a Latin colony forfeited their Roman citizenship, but the sacrifice may have been worthwhile in view of the plentiful, fertile land they could farm in the colony. The joint Roman-Latin colonies were a huge success. The Latin language and civilization spread, and the military presence of the loyal colonists prevented rebellions among the subject peoples.

The Romans built excellent roads throughout the peninsula. The most important of these was the via Appia, the contract for which was awarded in 312 by then censor Appius Claudius Caecus. The roads facilitated communication with Rome, military transport, and also trade and social relations between the different peoples.

What Rome established in Italy was by no means a nation in the modem sense, for many Italians did not speak Latin or follow Latin and Roman customs; many could not vote for the leaders they would follow in war; many had no rights in Rome at all. Eventually all free-born Italians did gain full citizenship, but they had to become Latinized first, and then fight for some rights. Despite the appearance of tyranny in Rome's domination of the non-Latin Italians, Rome brought many good things to them, the greatest being peace. The centralized government of Rome eliminated the incessant warfare among the different peoples of Italy.

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Chapter 13
The First Punic War

If in 270
B.C.
a Roman had predicted that the city-state that had not yet even subdued all peninsular Italy would, a century later, rule not only peninsular Italy, but also the western Mediterranean, much of Spain, part of southern Gaul, parts of northern Africa, and part of Greece, he likely would have been thought crazy. The events of the next century catapulted Rome from a position of importance only in Italy to a position of world power. The wars with Carthage were the catalyst.

Carthage was a Phoenician (in Latin, the adjective is Punica) city, roughly in what is Tunis today. It was founded by people from Tyre (in Syria) in the eighth century
B.C.
as a trading post; according to myth the founder of Carthage was Dido, whose dying curse called upon her descendants to avenge the wrong done her by Aeneas (see chapter 2). Carthage grew and became the leading naval power and the chief trading center of the western Mediterranean. In the sixth century Carthage occupied Corsica and Sardinia, and after centuries of war with the Greeks of Sicily, it came to control the western half of that island, while the Greeks maintained control of the eastern half with its rich and powerful city of Syracuse. Rome and Carthage had signed treaties in 508 and 348, and were not on hostile terms with each other until 264
B.C.

The problems began in Sicily. Some mercenaries from Campania, who had been employed by the ruler of Syracuse, upon his death in 289 took control of the Sicilian town Messana, which lay not far from Syracuse and just across the straits from the toe of Italy. The mercenaries, who called themselves Mamertines (after Mamers, the Oscan form of the name Mars), killed many of Messana's citizens

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and stole their property. Hiero, the general of the Syracusan army, then defeated the renegade mercenaries in battle, for which victory he was named king of Syracuse; the mercenaries then sent embassies to Carthage and Rome, to ask for help. While the Romans debated the pros and cons of sending help, Carthage sent a garrison into the city.

The Romans were weary after the war with Pyrrhus, but feared that the Carthaginians, who already controlled much of Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia, would use Sicily as a base for attacking Italy: Messana was separated from the Italian mainland by the Strait of Messina, which is only a few miles wide. The renegade mercenaries hardly deserved help: Years earlier a Roman garrison had taken over Rhegium, the town that it was supposed to guard, and had stolen citizens' property; the Romans conquered their own garrison and executed the guilty soldiers (fellow Romans and Latins) to restore Rome's good reputation. But Rome's fear of Carthage prevailed. The Romans sent the consul Appius Claudius Caudex to help the Mamertines keep the Carthaginians out of Messana.

When Claudius arrived in Sicily he found that the situation had changed. The Mamertines had managed to trick the Carthaginian garrison into leaving the city (intolerant of failure, the Carthaginians later crucified the commander for cowardice), and Messana was now besieged by both King Hiero and the Carthaginians, who had made a treaty to drive the Mamertines out of Sicily. Claudius quickly conquered the army of Syracuse, prompting Hiero to withdraw from the conflict; he soon became a steadfast ally of Rome. Then Claudius defeated the Carthaginian army. The Carthaginians responded by sending an army of fifty thousand to Agrigentum in southwest Sicily, which they planned to establish as a base for subduing all of Sicily. Claudius sped across Sicily and defeated the Carthaginians at Agrigentum; then the Romans got the idea of conquering all Sicily. To achieve that end, however, they had to build a navy.

The Romans had no experience in building warships; they had had to depend upon seafaring Italians even to convey their troops from Italy to Sicily. While transporting their troops across the straits, the Romans encountered a bit of luck: One of the Carthaginian

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